Alyson Schafer is a psychotherapist and one of Canada's leading parenting
experts. She's the author of the best-selling "Breaking the Good
Mom Myth" (Wiley, 2006) and host of TV's The Parenting
Show a live call-in show in Toronto, Ontario.

The media relies on Alyson's comments and opinions. you can find her
interviewed and quoted extensively in such publications as Cosmopolitan,
Readers' Digest, Canadian Living, Today's Parents, and Canadian Families.

How Spanking Harms the Brain

Psychology Today, February 12, 2012, by Molly S. Castelloe, Ph.D. in The Me in We

Spanking erodes developmental growth in children and decreases a
child's IQ, a recent Canadian study shows.

This analysis, conducted at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario
in Ottawa, offers new evidence that corporal punishment causes cognitive
impairment and long-term developmental difficulties.

Debates around physical punishment typically revolve around the ethics
of using violence to enforce discipline. This inquiry synthesized 20
years of published research on the topic and aims to "shift the ethical
debate over corporal punishment into the medical sphere," says Joan
Durant, a professor at University of Manitoba and one of the authors of
the study.

According to the report, spanking may reduce the brain's grey matter,
the connective tissue between brain cells. Grey matter is an integral
part of the central nervous system and influences intelligence testing
and learning abilities. It includes areas of the brain involved in
sensory perception, speech, muscular control, emotions and memory.
Additional research supports the hypothesis that children and
adolescents subjected to child abuse and neglect have less grey matter
than children who have not been ill-treated.
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